Here we are, dear reader, still going on about figuring out what to learn.

I return to this dead-horse of a topic because there is more life yet in this mule than I’ve realized.

You see, I started a new job recently (sorry for the infrequent updates), and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my time at the new company.

The trouble is, this company is big enough to create its own -everything-.

The small niche of expertise I’ve gained, -mostly- doesn’t apply at my current company.

So the question for me is: do I try to keep up-to-date in my area of expertise? Or do I learn more about all the tech created by the company, that are for the most part not used anywhere else?

There are real tradeoffs here.

If I learn more of the company’s tech, I might be able to take on more and different kind of work at the company, or at least have better understanding of capabilities and limitations of the tech stack. But if I switch jobs, most of that knowledge would become inapplicable, at least directly.

On the other hand, if I try to keep up with my area of expertise, it won’t directly help me do my job. On the positive side, it may allow me to bring fresh perspectives and ideas, as well as keeping me more employable elsewhere. Oh, and keeping my side projects going will keep that side income going (although it’s laughably small sum of money).

...

The first question to ask myself is “How long do I want to stay at this job?”

If the past year has shown us anything (2020 has been rough for a lot of us), how long you want to stay at a job may not correlate to how long you’ll actually stay there. So even if I want to stay at this job for the next 10 years, maybe I won’t make it past a year. So does that mean I should keep my expertise up-to-date? But in doing so, I’m not able to learn more about the company’s tech, which may in turn contribute to me not being there as long? It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that.

So maybe this question isn’t the right one to ask.

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Another question: “What are some unique opportunities working at this company affords me?”

In other words, how can I best leverage my current job, in terms of what I can learn? There are some parts of the company’s tech that I find really cool and are industry-leading. If I can leverage the company’s position, I can presumably also stay marketable, albeit in a different area of expertise.

Another helpful question: “Are there any popular open-source projects that are maintained by the company that I can learn?” Learning these technologies may de-risk my knowledge becoming stale when I switch job.

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The downside to learning the company’s tech is that I won’t be able to make side-projects out of them. Besides the meager side income, being able to control the entire process from code to deployment is powerful stuff; that’s the kind of stuff that you can point to, on your resume, for a very long time. Compare this to some side project you work on at your previous company; what happens to that? It gets forgotten, someone turns it off after you leave, and you delete that one line in your resume after your next job.

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I do not have one clear cut answer here. As for me, I think I’ll pursue more of the company’s tech.

Right after I release my next side project…